USS Enterprise (eventually) on Discovery?

[The Mighty Monkey of Mim]

No, it really doesn't. Blue has a definition in the wavelengths, and we all agree, except those with receptor defects, that we call those blue. We're getting not only off-topic, but into the realm of the ridiculous.



Again, that is entirely irrelevant. We have methods to remove the issues inherent with perception. And if you mention solipsism in your response, you lose.

It is indeed a bit ridiculous that the one purporting himself to be arguing against subjectivism and solipsism here appears equally unwilling to actually read or engage with the links I've posted, rejecting the acknowledged "reality" of both philosophers and physicists, and substituting his own!

But it's more on-topic than you might think. Case in point: were the TOS command uniforms green or gold? In "objective" fact, they were the former, yet generally gave the impression of being the latter as photographed under studio lighting, and were later explicitly established as such in "Trials and Tribble-ations" (DS9). So much for perception having no bearing on what's considered "true" in-universe, eh?

(I'm also most curious as to what exactly these alleged "methods to remove the issues inherent with perception" you mention with respect to the interpretation of fiction are...)

Well I meant a change where they went *back* to a time period and changed something. Like if they’d had TNG Klingons in “trails and tribbleations” for instance. To my knowledge there’s not been a change quite like this - which operates so broadly on the visuals - that was retroactive before.

Yes there were updates in TMP then TNG etc.

But with the exception of the romulans stupidly wearing NEM era uniforms in Enterprise, I can’t think of a time where they revisited a previous time period and changed things (except that mess in “all good things” where Picard’s chair was WRONG, but that was a Q recreation. I’m not still mad about it, honest...)

As noted in Michael and Denise Okuda's Star Trek Encyclopedia, on pg. 296 of the 1999 edition:

There were actually two Starships Melbourne used in these episodes. The first was a Nebula-class model, barely glimpsed as a wrecked hulk in the spaceship graveyard from "The Best of Both Worlds, Part II" (TNG). When the scene was redone three years later for "Emissary" (DS9), a decision was made to instead use the more detailed USS Excelsior model originally built for Star Trek III. Both models were given the same Starfleet registry number, but since the Excelsior version was seen fairly clearly on screen, and the Nebula version was not seen well, we now assume that the Melbourne "really" was an Excelsior-class ship...
​

In the originally aired version of "The Way To Eden" (TOS), the Aurora was represented by a modification of the Tholian ship model from "The Tholian Web" (TOS); in the "remastered" version, this was replaced with a modification of Mudd's ship from the remastered "Mudd's Women" (TOS):

Similarly, the Woden in the original version of "The Ultimate Computer" (TOS) was represented by stock footage of the Botany Bay from "Space Seed" (TOS), but was replaced by a modification of the Antares from the remastered "Charlie X" (TOS), based on the cargo drones seen in "More Trouble, More Tribbles" (TAS):

Now, on the one hand, such changes might be argued to be "smaller" in the sense that each retconned a vessel which had only one minor appearance. On the other, they might be considered "bigger" in the sense that the replacements were substantially more different to the originals than the DSC Enterprise is to the original pilot version. (Which itself was only seen once, or at most twice, if one counts "The Cage" and "The Menagerie" as two separate appearances, yet with the latter at least being in any case an illusory re-creation of the Talosians, much as you say of the "All Good Things..." example you cite above!)

Furthermore, these are instances of a ship being retconned from one configuration to another in the exact same time and place! At least we'd never seen the Enterprise in 2257 before. However much or little it might strain one's suspension of disbelief, there's absolutely nothing about her appearance in DSC that requires us to believe she didn't look the way(s) we've seen her before (or after) on all those other occasions.

Yesterday, I happened upon this piece of artwork done by Andy Probert in the late 70s and I was struck by the high level of similarity with the final scene of the Enterprise in Discovery season 1:

Oh yes indeed, they've most definitely raided the vintage art department archives in designing DSC. Discovery herself is quite apparently based on Ken Adam and Ralph McQuarrie's concepts for what the Enterprise was to look like in Planet Of The Titans, an unproduced Trek film that was being planned even before Phase II. And the interview with Robert Fletcher I linked to above also contains this sketch which seems to have strongly influenced the look of the Klingons:

(Speaking of which, @Groppler Zorn, what TMP—and later DS9 and the first two seasons of ENT—did with the Klingons is another obvious example of a previously-established look being changed retroactively with no intent of providing acknowledgment or explanation onscreen...until that intent changed. And changed again. And again...)

-MMoM

 

[Mudd]

I got to see a lot of the models used in "Best Of Both Worlds" in the TNG art department. That whole business of the way they kitbashed commercial kits of different scales, used marking pens for various pods and engines, and varied the scale by using tape to put larger or smaller windows on them was...real cool.

 

[Mudd]

But it's more on-topic than you might think. Case in point: were the TOS command uniforms green or gold? In "objective" fact, they were the former, yet generally gave the impression of being the latter as photographed under studio lighting, and were later explicitly established as such in "Trials and Tribble-ations" (DS9). So much for perception having no bearing on what's considered "true" in-universe, eh?

Until you get to the HD remasters of TOS, at which point the command uniforms clearly appear avocado green in many shots.

Color is not an inherent property of objects. It depends upon viewing conditions. So much for objectivity.

 

[The Mighty Monkey of Mim]

Color is not an inherent property of objects. It depends upon viewing conditions. So much for objectivity.

I don't know if you've actually been following the progression of this argument or not, but thanks for your support, be it intentional or otherwise!


-MMoM

 

[Enterprise1701]

Hasn't every damn (canon) Star Trek story featuring Earth's Sun got it wrong that Sol appears yellow from an outer space view when it would in fact appear white at a relatively short distance in a vacuum?

 

[Belz...]

It is indeed a bit ridiculous that the one purporting himself to be arguing against subjectivism and solipsism here appears equally unwilling to actually read or engage with the links I've posted, rejecting the acknowledged "reality" of both philosophers and physicists, and substituting his own!

Laugh at your strawman all you want. That isn't what I'm doing. Nowhere am I substituting my "reality" for anyone's. My point has been and remains that there are things not up for interpretation; what is seen and stated in canon and by the showrunners are the "facts" of the series. Its "reality", if you will. Some of it is impossible to determine, as when there is an irreconcilable contradiction, but that's beside the point.

But it's more on-topic than you might think. Case in point: were the TOS command uniforms green or gold? In "objective" fact, they were the former, yet generally gave the impression of being the latter as photographed under studio lighting, and were later explicitly established as such in "Trials and Tribble-ations" (DS9). So much for perception having no bearing on what's considered "true" in-universe, eh?

No. It's not the subjective perception which is at play in your example, but lighting and film, which are objective factors.

(I'm also most curious as to what exactly these alleged "methods to remove the issues inherent with perception" you mention with respect to the interpretation of fiction are...

We're not talking about interpretation, but facts. You're simply proceding from an incorrect premise (we're possibly talking past one another, and you think I'm talking about something I'm not). It's a fact that, for instance, a guest star in one of the TNG episodes was holding the tricorder upside down. The explanation you come up with, however, is interpretation.

Color is not an inherent property of objects. It depends upon viewing conditions. So much for objectivity.

All of those viewing conditions are objective! Lighting, angle, etc. None of those are subjective. "Objective" doesn't mean "unchanging".

 

[The Mighty Monkey of Mim]

It's not the subjective perception which is at play in your example, but lighting and film, which are objective factors.

Those objective factors caused the uniforms to be subjectively perceived as gold, despite being "objectively" green (to put it your way). This led directly to them actually becoming gold when it came time to recreate them. The subjective begets the objective as much as the reverse, most especially in the arena of art. It is a circuit, in which both artist and audience are equally necessary and integral components. They can of course be one and the same, and to some extent are unavoidably and inextricably so. The artist cannot create without observing the creation, thus becoming in that same moment the audience. The audience cannot observe the creation without interpreting it, thus becoming in turn the artist.

My point has been and remains that there are things not up for interpretation; what is seen and stated in canon and by the showrunners are the "facts" of the series. Its "reality", if you will. Some of it is impossible to determine, as when there is an irreconcilable contradiction, but that's beside the point.

We're not talking about interpretation, but facts. You're simply proceding from an incorrect premise. It's a fact that, for instance, a guess star in one of the TNG episodes was holding the tricorder upside down. The explanation you come up with, however, is interpretation.

One more time: there are no "facts" within fiction that are not open to interpretation. Whatever one designer or showrunner or writer says at a given moment is their interpretation of the work they and their cohorts have created; it precludes nobody from having a differing or even "irreconcilably contradictory" one, and if we accord it more weight than another, it is only by choice. As do many of us, I tend toward choosing to do so myself, yet only with the conscious recognition that it may just as easily be overturned by the next designer or showrunner or writer to come along—or even the very same one—as has indeed happened on many an occasion.

Likewise, what is said or seen onscreen can just as readily be revealed to be incorrect, or given new context that completely changes its meaning, or simply ignored, or what have you, and bearing this in mind, any "fact" presented must be counterbalanced with a view to its potential falsification. And there is no "fact" that cannot potentially be falsified in fiction. It's simply a question of whether we want to believe it or not, because in actuality we're not arguing facts at all. We are indeed arguing interpretations, and that's what the "reality" is "really" made up of.

Ultimately, there is no "upside down" or "right side up" to the tricorder, because there is no tricorder. Even the very idea that what you see on the screen represents such a thing in the first place is an interpretation. A mutual pretense. A game. But enough of my harping on this. If you don't want to see it that way, so be it. It wasn't actually where we started out with this anyway.

Whatever you may have been saying before, or are saying now, I stepped into this when it appeared to me that you were claiming the question of whether a design is "dated" and thus "needed changing" is somehow not subjective. It seems to me that you initially raised the "can't be blue and not blue" canard with respect to your disagreement with @BillJ over whether such applied to the original Enterprise, as if somehow either of you could possibly be exclusively or "objectively" right in any such subjective assessment of its aesthetics. You can't, any more than Matt Jefferies or Richard Taylor could, although any one of you could certainly be better reasoned and argued than another. Yet even that determination would essentially have to be a largely subjective one, too.

(For the record, I neither agree nor disagree with all that either of you have said. I think I may need to go back and examine each of your lines of discourse further in order to better understand each of them; in all honesty, it seems to me like you've both been jumping all over the map from one post to another, but I fully admit this may only be my faulty perception. As I've said before, I find it difficult to keep up with this thread, as it often moves whole pages ahead in the time it takes me to cobble together one of these no-doubt-overly-lengthy responses. I genuinely apologize if I've mischaracterized your positions, and if I've made it equally difficult to follow mine in the process.)

-MMoM

 

[Belz...]

Those objective factors caused the uniforms to be subjectively perceived as gold, despite being "objectively" green (to put it your way).

Ok do this test. Play an episode of TOS on your screen and point a colour detector, and tell me what part of the spectrum the detector sees. It'll say yellow, even though the uniform itself is green. The yellow appearance of the uniform is NOT subjective. It doesn't depend on the interpretation or experience of each observer. If you shine a blue light on a white board it'll appear blue-ish, but it doesn't mean that seeing it as blue is subjective. That's not what the word means.

The subjective begets the objective as much as the reverse, most especially in the arena of art.

No argument there.

One more time: there are no "facts" within fiction that are not open to interpretation.

Really? What are the words spoken by Picard in the opening of each episode of TNG? Is that open to interpretation, or can you be certain that it's "Space, the final frontier. These are the voyages of the starship Enterprise. Its continuing mission, to explore strange new worlds, to seek out new life and new civilisations... to boldly go where no one has gone before"? Face it, there ARE facts in fiction: every thing that is recorded on the episode is a fact.

Furthermore, every statement made by the people who control the franchise is a fact as well. This doesn't preclude contradiction, by the way, because fiction, unlike reality, is not inherently consisent. See below.

Whatever one designer or showrunner or writer says at a given moment is their interpretation of the work they and their cohorts have created; it precludes nobody from having a differing or even "irreconcilably contradictory" one, and if we accord it more weight than another, it is only by choice.

You are correct about that last bit, but once the people running the franchise state which of the contradictory elements is the true one, it ceases to be an interpretation and becomes fact because these people are the ones determining what the facts of the show are. Fiction doesn't operate like reality: some people actually can just say-so its facts.

Ultimately, there is no "upside down" or "right side up" to the tricorder, because there is no tricorder.

Come on, man. There is no tricorder in real life, but there is a prop that represents a tricorder on the show and the writings on it are oriented a certain way, and all characters but her hold it in a way consistent with that. It's not interpretation to say that she is holding it upside down in that respect. Now, you could say that the display of the tricorder was, in-universe, showing stuff in a way that she thought more useful to look at upside down, but that's interpretation.

Whatever you may have been saying before, or are saying now, I stepped into this when it appeared to me that you were claiming the question of whether a design is "dated" and thus "needed changing" is somehow not subjective.

Quote me. I never said this. I have consistently said that in my opinion it needed an update, and that my experience is that the general audience would agree. I never stated that this was somehow objective, as that would be ludicrous.

(For the record, I neither agree nor disagree with all that either of you have said.

That would be very surprising if you did agree or disagree with everything I said! I generally enjoy your contributions as well, so please don't take this back-and-forth as a series of attacks, or anything.

 

[Mudd]

Any canon facts can be changed in a moment by the showrunners, simply by contradicting them. So they, at least, can "reinterpret" whatever they choose.

It's happened before; it will happen again.

Nothing fictional is a fact, duh.

 

[BillJ]

Face it, there ARE facts in fiction: every thing that is recorded on the episode is a fact.

Except the look.

 

[Groppler Zorn]

There were actually two Starships Melbourne used in these episodes.

Of course - the Melbourne. Same ship two completely different models! Fair point

My inner awkward nerd is saying “yes but there’s no explicit evidence that Shelby meant that the speck on the screen in BoBW was the Melbourne - she could just have been listing ships destroyed” and also “does it even matter that the ship in ‘emissary’ is the Melbourne - I just thought it was ‘random excelsior class ship no.4 that got blowed up at the battle of wolf 359’”

But even I can hear how much I’m grasping at straws in that argument! The Melbourne seals the deal I think.

In the originally aired version of "The Way To Eden" (TOS), the Aurora was represented by a modification of the Tholian ship model from "The Tholian Web" (TOS); in the "remastered" version, this was replaced with a modification of Mudd's ship from the remastered "Mudd's Women" (TOS):

Furthermore, these are instances of a ship being retconned from one configuration to another in the exact same time and place! At least we'd never seen the Enterprise in 2257 before. However much or little it might strain one's suspension of disbelief, there's absolutely nothing about her appearance in DSC that requires us to believe she didn't look the way(s) we've seen her before (or after) on all those other occasions.

Ok so to come back to my original question about a similar retcon happening before, the answer is unequivocally “yes” - I’m convinced!

Granted, I don’t like the discoprise design as much as I do the TOS design, but I’m happy to rationalise it as a refit in a time period which, as you say, we’ve not actually seen before.

I’d sooner do that than all kinds of mental gymnastics to make the Melbourne work without simply saying “ah they swapped the model” (maybe there were two starships Melbourne? Oh who cares haha!). I think it becomes a case of whether those other retcons were as important as changing the Enterprise (at least in terms of impact on the fans). I don’t care about the Melbourne. Or the romulans. Or the 1701D saucer rim. Or the alien of the week ships in TOS-R. I care about the Klingons and the Enterprise - which is obviously at the heart of the whole issue.

Change all you want, but don’t get between me and the Enterprise!!! (ah, DS9 references...)

 

[Groppler Zorn]

Except the look.

Which, as @The Mighty Monkey of Mim has pointed out above, has happened several times long before DSC came along.

Ships that were facts of TOS are no longer so in TOS-R.

Ships that were facts of BoBW are no longer facts in Emissary.

I would argue that a visual reboot is contradictory to the notion that events in Star Trek are entirely factual. Which as @Belz... points out, having things presented to us as facts (even new facts) doesn’t mean that contradictions can’t (or won’t) happen.

(I hope that’s an accurate summary of both arguments there - apologies if I’ve got the wrong end of the stick!)

Addendum: maybe it’s the case that until a line of dialogue “opens the box”, all contradictions in Trek are like Schroedinger’s cat. They are simultaneously contradictory and also factual.

Schroedinger’s Trek anyone?

*TOS theme plays*

 

[BillJ]

Ships that were facts of TOS are no longer so in TOS-R.

I still think there is a difference in one off changes, and changing things that have a long history. Someone forgot the Melbourne was a Nebula (almost three years later), it happens. Someone thought a TAS ship (with the same design flavor as TOS) would look better than a re-use of the Botany Bay.

Of course, that is my opinion.

 

[Groppler Zorn]

I still think there is a difference in one off changes, and changing things that have a long history. Someone forgot the Melbourne was a Nebula (almost three years later), it happens. Someone thought a TAS ship (with the same design flavor as TOS) would look better than a re-use of the Botany Bay.

Of course, that is my opinion.

So do I - I mention above the fact that I don’t care about the Melbourne but I do care about the Enterprise - a bit like Riker...

In terms of rationalising the often nonlinear nature of Star Trek the best way I can see to look at it personally is to say “everything is factual whilst also being simultaneously contradictory and subject to change”. Because Star Trek

 

[Tuskin38]

Someone forgot the Melbourne was a Nebula (almost three years later), it happens

They didn’t forget. Says right in the quote, they chose to use the excelsior model instead because it was more detailed.

It was a willful contradiction in continuity for visual reasons.

 

[Jadeb]

Do people now consider the remastered effects canon? I can't say I've ever thought of them as anything but a novelty.

 

[Tuskin38]

Do people now consider the remastered effects canon? I can't say I've ever thought of them as anything but a novelty.

CBS seems to

 

[BillJ]

Do people now consider the remastered effects canon? I can't say I've ever thought of them as anything but a novelty.

They are canon, along with the original effects.

 

[Jadeb]

CBS seems to

I'm glad I'm completely indifferent to what CBS says about this stuff. It's a lot less to worry about.

 

[Tuskin38]

I'm glad I'm completely indifferent to what CBS says about this stuff. It's a lot less to worry about.

Well you can still watch the originals.

I prefer the remastered because it changes some of the reused FX and makes them unique.

Continuity wise, the remastered FX is currently how TOS looks in canon.